How
did you come to be involved in Code Name: The Cleaner?
The producers sent me the script. When I read it and found out that
Cedric [The Entertainer] was attached, naturally it was a shoe-in. I've
found him to be quite brilliant in everything that I've ever seen him
in. We did a read through in LA, we had a big cast of people and when
’Jake’, Cedric's scenes and mine came up we just started
riffing and playing and ad-libbing. There was a chemistry there that
I felt could really work. It ended up being as much fun as I knew it
was going to be once I walked out of the read through. I was sad when
it was over.
Tell
us a little bit about your character in the film, Diane?
Diane is a very straight-laced, hardcore, head of security badass. She
has to think on her feet in order to try and extract information out
of Cedric's character and, since he has lost his memory from a bump
on the head, she pretends to be his wife.
You
had to film quite a saucy seduction scene. How was that for you?
I was petrified! It's horrible having to drop one's robe and expose
yourself in your knickers in front of Cedric and a crew of people. It
was a good five minutes of feeling extremely uncomfortable and then
you realise you are just another girl in her bra and panties and Cedric
was extremely supportive and made me feel very comfortable. I wasn't
sure what I was going to do once I turned the music on and had to dance
over to the bed. We probably did about 20 takes of just the craziest
dances! Cedric can move like nobody, he’s a brother that knows
how to dance, and I was feeling extremely white after he started busting
some moves. He would be on the bed and I would do my thing and he would
then get up and start imitating what I was doing. We did some pretty
wild dances but I think in the end they settled on quite a tame one.
Did
you eat anything the day you had to film that scene?
You know, I had been so busy I hadn’t worked out in a while and
about a week and a half before we were due to shoot I stood in front
of the mirror and thought ‘who am I trying to kid!’ So I
started running, running on the treadmill, running to work, running
with my dog… Luckily there is a mountain in Vancouver called The
Grouse Grind which is a very painful experience and whenever I had some
time off, I would just get my ass up that mountain, huffing and puffing.
It would have been nice to have had six months to work it, but it was
not to be!
Did
you enjoy working on a comedy?
I love doing comedy and I’ve been very lucky, I’ve worked
with some amazing comedians, nobody quite like Cedric though. He just
never stops. He never does the same scene twice. He’s just constantly
got that sense of humour of his and that crazy mind working at full
throttle.
Lucy
Lui says you are in great shape, did you have to do much training for
your fight scene?
That's nice of her; she's in pretty damn good shape herself. We choreographed
the fight scene with a stunt coordinator. Both Lucy and I have a little
foundation in martial arts but we tried to choreograph it in a way that
looked very authentic and tough. People had been calling it the cat
fight, which we just didn't like; it's not a hair-pulling, slapping,
nail-breaking fight. This was combinations and roundhouses and throwing
punches and dodging kicks. It was the real deal.
Aside
from fighting, the film also sees you have a close encounter with Lucy
in a bubble bath…
That wasn't in the script initially. Cedric's character Jake has these
fantasies throughout the film, and close to shooting the fight scene
Cedric thought that his male fantasy could come in handy. He had the
producers suggest that we have this bubble bath fantasy, Lucy and I
unclothed, luring him into this world of bubbles. And we thought, 'No.
It's not going to happen.' But slowly we warmed to the idea as it was
befitting with the fantasies that occurred throughout the film. Once
we established how we would do it and what we would wear, we felt it
would be an unusual take on a brutal fight scene, so we shot it.
